3 Questions: Juan Martinez

Mon 10 Apr 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Earlier this fast-moving year, we celebrated Juan Martinez publishing his first novel, Extended Stay. We’d published Juan’s short story collection, Best Worst American, a few years before and we’re always going to celebrate a new book by an author we’ve published. I was curious about the title so I sent Juan a few not very serious questions — plus a request for some book recommendations. For an actual, decent interview, here’s Tobias Carroll’s on Vol.1 Brooklyn.

What’s his first novel about? Publisher’s Weekly summed it up this way:

“Martinez’s impressive debut — part of the University of Arizona’s Camino del Sol series, which spotlights Latinx authors — reads like a collaboration between Lewis Carroll and H.P. Lovecraft, from an idea by Stephen King. This is a fresh and stunning winner.”

Gavin: You may have covered this in another interview, sorry: have you ever lived in an extended stay hotel? 

Juan: I don’t think anyone’s asked, actually! I totally did live in an extended hotel during my first two weeks in Las Vegas: it was a Budget Suites of America that had lost its franchise rights, so they put a tarp over “Budget,” possibly over “Suites.” I may have stayed in an “of America.” It was rough. They did have free coffee and there was this real effort on the part of the manager to keep the place nice — the lobby, at least. And anyone who had lived there a while had clearly made an effort to keep their area kind of nice. I remember a window that had a bunch of lighthouses neatly arranged. You did what you could to make the place yours.

GG: Are there other meanings that should be read into the title, such as trying to get a dog to sit while you walk 20 yards with their ball?

JM: The title does have a bunch of other meanings — or does suggest some other meanings. I’ll take the dog one! There’s also the whole bit about one overextending a tourist visa to circumvent immigration policies (the siblings do this in the novel). But there’s also the whole experience of leaving your home country for another place: there’s a sense, at least for a while, that you’re just, you know, extending a visit, that the whole experience is temporary, that eventually you’ll make your way back to your “real” home.

GG: What is it about horror that pulls you in?

JM: I love the nightmare logic of horror: how surreal horror can get, how it helps narratives navigate and blur the border between the world of the senses and whatever’s beyond that. I’m also just grateful for horror — I read so much of it, so much Peter Straub and Stephen King and Ramsey Campbell when I was a teenager and super sick — and I wanted to go back to that feeling of deep immersion in darkness. It was just such a wonderful way to navigate my own trauma back then, and now, even. Horror is just so good at that.

GG: One bonus question: Have you read anything good recently?

JM: I’m halfway through Elizabeth McKenzie’s The Dog of the North & Rebecca Makkai’s I Have Some Questions For You — they’re both excellent! As is Nathan Ballingrud’s The Strange. I also can’t say enough good things about George Gissing’s New Grub Street, a brutal novel about writing and money and the publishing crisis. It’s a 19th-century novel but it turns out things were right back then too.

GG: Thanks, Juan!

Pick up Extended Stay from Women & Children First or Bookshop.org.